Obama Picks Pro-Abortion Activist to Lead Global Health Initiative

President Barack Obama has selected a pro-abortion activist from Minnesota to lead the multibillion dollar Global Health Initiative the State Department is sponsoring. The move adds to the pro-abortion record Obama has crafted since taking over the White House in January 2009.

According to the Associated Press, State Department officials confirmed Wednesday that Lois Quam will become the executive director of the GHI.

Quam is a former UnitedHealth Group executive who is married to Matt Entenza, a former state legislator who lost his bid to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Minnesota to Mark Dayton last year. Quam also was a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her health care task force in the 1990s that promoted a government takeover of health care including taxpayer funding of abortions and rationing.

Scott Fischbach, the head of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, told LifeNews.com “Quam and her husband have long been active in pro-abortion politics” in his state.

“Her husband spent millions of their own money to try and get elected Governor last year, but they were unsuccessful,” he said. “He ran as 100% pro-choice and had a long pro-abortion voting record during his time in the MN State House of Representatives.”

“Quam will be a point person now for the Obama administration to push abortion globally,” he added.

The Global Health Initiative, which is supposedly designed to promote disease fighting prevention programs, better nutrition, and pre and post-natal care, will be funded with $63 billion in taxpayer funds over the next six years. But, last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the GHI would promote ‘reproductive health care and family planning’ as a ‘basic right’ around the word and Clinton has previously stated for the record that this includes abortion.

In April 2009 testimony before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, when asked whether the United States’ definition of “reproductive health” includes abortion, Clinton replied that, “We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women’s health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.”

The “centerpiece” of the Obama foreign policy, she said, would be the Global Health Initiative and that it would link the reproductive rights agenda to high profile global health concerns. Launched by the World Economic Forum in 2002, the initiative is supposed to focus on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

“The plan to link abortion rights to the Global Health Initiative through the issue of maternal and child health was announced at the 2007 United Nations (UN)-sponsored “Women Deliver” conference by abortion rights groups such as International Planned Parenthood and Center for Reproductive Rights as well as the UN Population Fund (UNFPA),” says Susan Yoshihara of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. “At that time, these groups also called for linking abortion rights to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by inserting a target for “universal access to reproductive health” under MDG 5 on maternal health. Critics see this as a strategy to dip into funds previously directed to fights AIDS and other diseases.”

Clinton pledged U.S. commitment to the reproductive health target, saying, “We have pledged new funding, new programs, and a renewed commitment to achieve Millennium Development Goal Five, namely a [three-fourths] reduction in global maternal mortality, and universal access to reproductive healthcare.”

“That target has never been accepted by the General Assembly in open debate, and was soundly rejected the last time it was raised in 2005,” Yoshihara said.